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It’s in her eyes.

In the gentle way she cups my jaw.

In the fierceness of her hug.

I grab the blanket and tuck it over our bodies, hold her as her breathing evens out and the night grows late.

Only then do I gather her into my arms and carry her upstairs.

It’s when I’m tugging the blankets up and over her that I see the notebook on the nightstand, one of the pens I bought her atop it.

And there my heart goes again.

“I promise you,” I whisper, smoothing back her hair. “I fucking promise you that I won’t mess this up.”

She burrows into the blankets, breathes my name.

I watch her for one more moment, committing the sound of her, the sight of her, the way it feels to be allowed this close to her to memory.

Then I slip out of the house, locking the door behind me.

I shiver when the cold air cuts through my clothes, rubbing at my nape as I walk to my van.

Snap!

I whirl around at the sound of a tree branch breaking, my stomach clenching, my pulse speeding, searching the shadows for the source of the noise⁠—

A raccoon materializes out of the darkness and my shoulders relax.

Its beady eyes lock onto me and it hisses.

“Chill,” I mutter, reaching for the door handle. “You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.”

It glares at me for one long second.

Then waddles its fat ass away.

Amused, I shake my head, climb into the driver’s seat, and go back to my empty house.

Twenty-Two

Lainey

“Do it, Mom!” Ollie orders, his stuffed Ollie tucked under one arm as he dances around the living room. “Do it!”

Grinning, I put my laptop aside and reach for my phone.

“He won’t see it until after the game,” I remind him. “Which means you’ll be in bed. Asleep,” I add pointedly.

“That’s okay!” he says completing his dance. “He should still know we think it’s a good goal!”

It wasn’t just a good goal. It was a beauty of a goal—something I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish before Faye started dating her hockey player.

Before I started dating mine.

Dating.

God, is that what I’m doing?